Michael Winship: Talking down to America

Wednesday

I haven’t worked in the realm of children’s television in more than a decade, but lessons learned in that world are lessons learned for life.

I haven’t worked in the realm of children’s television in more than a decade, but lessons learned in that world are lessons learned for life.

First and foremost: Never condescend. When writing for kids, think of them as slightly shorter grown-ups with fewer bad habits and better credit.

Would that the Bush administration followed the non-condescension rule for adults. Instead, they’ve taken a page from the playbook of the late Uncle Don, host of a kiddy show during the glory days of radio.

It’s apocryphal, one of those hoary urban legends, but the story goes that after finishing the broadcast of his usual half-hour of moonbeams and treacle, Uncle Don turned to a colleague — not knowing the microphone was still hot — and said, “Well, that ought to hold the little bastards.”

Similarly, the White House seems to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that dispersing the same old, Uncle Don-style effluvium to the American public will continue to placate and hold us close. But more and more of us know it’s nothing more than a bad smell.

A comparison of two noteworthy speeches last week — Barack Obama on race, George Bush on Iraq — shows the difference between a candidate who talks to us like grown-ups and an incumbent who seems to think he’s still reading “My Pet Goat” to second-graders in Sarasota, Fla.

Regardless of how you feel about Obama’s candidacy or the continuing issue of his past affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, last Tuesday’s speech in Philadelphia was formidable, candid, sophisticated rhetoric.

As Peggy Noonan, a virtuoso of speechwriting for Ronald Reagan, observed, “He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping.” What he presented was, as per civil rights activist and historian Roger Wilkins, “the most extensive discussion of race ever by a presidential candidate.”

Obama rejected Wright’s incendiary remarks but not his friendship, and he placed the minister’s words in the context of the history of black churches in America.

“The anger is real,” Obama said. “It is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

Then he added, “A similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. ... So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”

Contrast that reality with the banana oil the president was peddling when he spoke at the Pentagon the next day, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. “The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around,” he insisted. “It has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. … The significance of this development cannot be overstated.”

Yes, it can. As Senate Majority Harry Reid noted, “We are proud of the warriors who have fought hard to reduce violence in Iraq in recent months. But America is not secure and the costs and consequences of the war continue to mount.

“Al-Qaida is stronger than it has ever been since 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains at large, the readiness of our Army and Marine Corps is at its lowest levels since Vietnam, and trends in Afghanistan are deeply troubling.”

In his new book, “Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power,” journalist Fred Kaplan concludes that the strategies of the Bush/Cheney co-presidency are based “not on a grasp of technology, history or foreign cultures but rather in fantasy, faith and willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences.”

It’s no wonder when told by ABC’s Martha Raddatz that two-thirds of Americans believe the war is not worth the cost in lives, money and international respect, the reply of Consigliere Cheney was a dismissive, supercilious “So?”

Speaking on behalf of former little bastards everywhere, that kind of condescension has got to go. November can’t come soon enough.

Michael Winship, a native of Canandaigua, is a freelance television writer in Manhattan and president of the Writers Guild of America, East.

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